


patience

by assassinactual



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 14:57:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2816300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/assassinactual/pseuds/assassinactual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Young vampire Mircalla has been sent on a hunt by her mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	patience

Patience was essential. A vampire must have patience. As Mother had told her, an immortal’s most potent weapon is time. Wait until your enemy is weak, wait until he thinks he is safe, wait until he makes himself vulnerable, then you strike.

And Mircalla had been patient. Sent north by mother, alone for the first time in two decades, she had been given two tasks: to kill a werewolf, and to fetch a girl. The werewolf came first. He was an enemy not only of Mother’s, but also of a local aristocrat whose aid she would need to get to the girl, the daughter of another nobleman.

As for the girl, Mother had told her she had to be alive, and that she was not to be fed on. She had also shown Mircalla a portrait of her. It was a few years old, apparently, but Mircalla thought she could see a resemblance to herself in the girl’s face.

She wondered what Mother wanted with her. Why she wanted her unharmed. Was she planning to replace Mircalla? Perhaps it would be better to just drain her, claim she went mad with blood lust – no. She squashed the rebellious thought before it fully formed. She owed this life after death to Mother. What were a few unpleasant errands, when measured against eternal life?

She forced thoughts of Mother and the girl out of her mind to focus on her werewolf hunt.

Locating him hadn’t been a problem. She had picked up his scent upon arriving in the nearby town a week earlier. But she couldn’t face him then. What she had in mind required finesse, and a full moon.

Careful questioning of a few inebriated townsfolk at the tavern had reveled where she would find her prey. Her business done, she enticed a pretty girl who had been eyeing her all evening back to the room she’d rented for some fun and a little snack.

Then, on the eve of the full moon, she had gone to the place where it was rumoured a werewolf attack or two had occurred. She scouted out the area, found a position that gave her a clear view of the river and the open space around it and wooded hills on either side. Then she dug out a spot in the snow under the cover of a fir tree and settled herself in.

She had been laying in wait with her rifle since dusk.

The temperature had been cold enough in the daytime, but had turned downright bone chilling after the sun set. Cold didn’t affect her quite like it did humans, but she thought she could fell the blood in her legs start to freeze. It was the kind of cold that would make a one’s breath catch in their throat, if one was inclined to breathe. Mircalla had stopped shortly after leaving the inn that afternoon.

She scanned the landscape in front of her again. The blue-white glow of moonlight reflected off snow lit up the night. Everything was clearly visible, would’ve been even without her enhanced vampiric sight, and there was clearly nothing moving. She was considering trying to retrieve the bottle of brandy from her bag to see if it had frozen yet when she thought she saw a shadow move in the trees.

There. Finally, the wolf was in sight. Moving at an easy run down the other side of the valley, straight for the clearing along the river. She measured his pace carefully, calculating when he would emerge from behind the last stand of trees into the open. He was close. Another half minute, maybe.

She forced her anticipation down, forced herself to stay calm. Her heartbeat, already slow from laying unmoving in the cold for hours, stopped entirely.

Mircalla blew out her last breath of warm air onto her rifle’s lock, then drew it back to full cock. That would thaw anything that had frozen, but she had a minute at most before the frigid air turned the moisture to ice.

She didn’t need a minute. The wolf broke out into the open precisely when Mircalla expected him to.

She took aim, corrected for his running and the drop of the bullet. Checked his pace again, checked for any change, the slightest breath of wind – nothing.

Everything was still. Everything was silent.

Time slowed and her awareness expanded.

She could see the wolf’s wild, black eyes, hear the shuffling of his steps on the snow.

Nearer to her, the faint sound of rushing water under the icy river, the creaking of trees as they froze, the whisper of snowflakes brushed aside by the sweep of her rifle following her prey.

Other than that –

Still.

Silent.

Mircalla’s finger fell from the guard onto the trigger and –

She hesitated. Just a moment, a blink of an eye to a human. But to a vampire, especially one in such a state of heightened awareness, it was an eternity. She wondered who this man was, who he had been before being bitten. She wondered what had led him to be here, in the sights of her rifle, what he had to earn Mother’s wrath.

She squeezed.

It happened in slow motion. The lock clicked, the flint scraped against the frizzen, throwing yellow sparks out into the darkness. The powder in the pan burned with a muffled _whoosh_ , then waiting, waiting – _crack_! A great gout of flame poured from the rifle’s barrel, throwing the silver bullet a quarter mile across the valley.

It impacted with a heavy _thump_ just behind the wolf’s front leg. The beast shuddered, took a single step, then collapsed to the ground, dead.

Mircalla waited, listened to the sound of her shot echo down the valley, watched the blood spill from the wolf’s side onto the white snow. Her lips curved upwards into a sinister grin, baring her fangs. A perfect shot through the heart. Exactly what she had been aiming for.

Piercing a werewolf’s heart with silver was the only way to stop it reverting human form upon its death. A dead man was of no use to her. The head of the monster that had terrorized the town, however, would impress the count that ruled these lands. And it would bring Mircalla one step closer to her goal.

Patience, Mother had taught her. Patience is crucial.


End file.
